Days That Shook The World – The Complete First
Season + Pilot (BBC DVD Set)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: C+
Representing
a shift I am not the biggest fan of, documentary TV series are replacing hard
facts with faint and often boring, extended recreations of the events with no
name actors and barely credible locations as if they were actual archive
footage. Days That Shook The World – The Complete First Season + Pilot (2003)
with 13 such shows including such diverse subjects as:
P) First In Flight: The Wright
Brothers/The Moon Landing
1) Coronation of Queen Elizabeth
II/Death of Diana
2) Assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand/Death of Hitler
3) Assassination of Martin Luther
King Jr./Release of Nelson Mandela
4) Hiroshima
5) Murder of the Romanovs/Fall of
Berlin Wall
6) Kristallnacht/Birth of Israel
7) Tutankhamun’s Tomb/Rosetta
Stone
8) First Nuclear Reactor/Chernobyl
9) Black September/Lockerbie
10) Assassination of
JFK/Resignation of Nixon
11) Marconi’s First Radio
Transmission/Concorde’s First Transatlantic Flight
12) Chuck Yeager & Bluebird
The
contrasts are at least interesting, but not as intriguing all the time as the
titles suggest. Still, some history is
better than none and this is at least a half-decent introductory series to the
history discussed.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is good and clean, if not spectacular
and has detail limits in what looks like an early HD shoot. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is without
surrounds, but is a more recent recording and fine for such a simple show. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo